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The Lower Depths
by user rmthunter What's missing from this? Crane says he was disappointed with Romney's answer to his question the other night. Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind. Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently. It was smart lawyers who came up with that travesty. And Giuliani just lost any ghost of a hope for my vote. (Hey -- it could have happened.) One wonders, however, how Clinton or Obama would answer that question? Before their clarifications, of course. Related: Andrew Sullivan comments on an article from WSJ: Remember the missing critical Padilla DVD? Recall that David Hicks has been put under a gag-order against discussing the torture techniques used against him by the US? Evidence is "disappeared." Detainees are gagged. Verdicts are pronounced based on testimony procured through torture. Col Couch is not stupid. He must also know that using evidence procured by torture is a war-crime. Every military prosecutor tasked by Bush and Cheney to prosecute torture victims is being set up as a war criminal. Bush and Cheney, meanwhile, secured their own legal immunity in the Military Commissions Act last year. The Military Commissions Act needs repeal very badly. It should never have been passed, but then, at the time Congress was still in the president's hip pocket. This is the price of one-party rule. I really don't understand how it took so long for people to see this. (And, as you can see from the first part above, some still don't.) If it's not America any more, what are we fighting for? Sullivan also points out this post from Glenn Reynolds. Apparently, the Geneva Conventions only apply to the other guy. This is choice: A few emailers are suggesting that there's some sort of contradiction here in my pointing this out, as if I'd never discussed the Geneva Conventions before. But, of course, the point is the double standard: the Geneva Conventions never seem to do our guys any good. Our enemies don't obey them, and our critics use them -- even when they don't apply -- as a way to call American troops and their friends torturers and war criminals. That's what I meant by "degraded environment," which aptly describes the political and intellectual environment in which such critics operate. As I've observed in the past, we don't operate in an environment of reciprocity now. As Professor Kenneth Anderson has noted, the Geneva Conventions tend to serve more as a source of urban legends for anti-American and anti-Bush writers who often don't even know, or care, what the Conventions say. Shall we start at the beginning? The Geneva Conventions don't do our guys "any good." What's the standard of measurement here? Reynolds (as seems to be his normal mode) slides past the basic issue: the Geneva Conventions are not a tit-for-tat. They're a codification of a moral standard, if you will. Adherence to the Conventions is not about the "other guys." It's about us. Our government has taken the position that we'll follow the Conventions when it's convenient (translation: lip service), which gives the other guy a green light to do whatever he damned well pleases because there will be no consequences from the international community. We've abdicated our moral authority on this one, which was one of the things that kept the Geneva Conventions and the other rules of conduct between nations alive. As for the "degraded environment," somehow, after nearly fifteen years of the Gingrich school of discourse and after six of the Rove Machine, I find it very strange to learn that a "degraded environment" is something that was created and maintained by the left. (It's Bill Clinton's fault.) And do note the cheap sophistry: anti-American and anti-Bush. I suppose we should be grateful that he hasn't conflated the two. Yet. (Just for clarification, anyone who equates criticism of government policy with being "anti-American" has earned my undying contempt. I consider them anti-American themselves. At the very least, they are professing to have no clue as to what this country is about. That's one reason that I refuse to take Reynolds seriously as a commentator. Cheap rhetoric will do it every time.) Speaking of David Hicks. . . . The terms of his plea bargain, as related by WaPo are pretty appalling, but very revealing. The deal included a statement by Mr. Hicks that he “has never been illegally treated” while a captive, despite claims of beatings he had made in the past. It also included a promise not to pursue suits over the treatment he received while in detention and “not to communicate in any way with the media” for a year. There's a concept in contract law called "coercive contracts" in which the parties occupy radically different positions of power. They are not enforceable. A lawyer, of course, is going to tell me this doesn't apply here, but why not? A plea bargain is, conceptually, a contract in which the parties operate from unequal positions of power. Both parties will abide by the terms as long as the benefits are seen to be roughly equal. This goes far beyond that. Please don't assume that I'm defending David Hicks. If the allegations have any truth at all, he deserves to be in jail. I question the methods used in his case, as in the cases of all those detained at Gitmo and similar facilities (you didn't think Gitmo was the only one, did you?). Consider that over thalf the "dangerous terrorists" detained in Cuba have been released because there was no basis for their detention to begin with -- but not until the American public started making a stink about it. I have no patience with parsing "torture" and "coercive interrogation." That's a legalistic dodge. The problem as I see it is simply that, because of the techniques used by American interrogators and the abrogation of the most fundamental rights of the detainees, not to mention the questionable integrity of our national leadership, anything that comes out of these hearings is suspect. We can't trust out own justice system any more. (Crossposted at Hunter at Random) __NOEDITSECTION__ Category: Opinions Category: Opinions by User Rmthunter Category: April 1, 2007 Category: the rule of law Opinions From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki. From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki.